It's always interesting to see the pendulum swing from one side to another. In the case of a grandfather clock, the swing is quite extreme just like in real life.
Was a time when women were completely sidelined. No decision could be taken by the wife that steered the course of the family. No, no, that was the prerogative of the husband. No decision about whom she could marry and have to spend the rest of her natural life. That of course was the father's domain. Then came the changes that took place to bring us to where we are today. Fathers and mothers tremble in front of the hormone filled teen. She does what she wants when she thinks it is time to do it. Dress like a slut and give it away like there was no tomorrow. Why stop there? In times of emotional stress, look for solace in the arms of another woman. If that works out, shack up, marry perhaps and even get a child through artificial insemination. So heres mom and dad who are two moms really. Oh what a fine job they do according to everybody. But that is not the focus of my thoughts in regard to the pendulum. They were really about education. While the girls were father-Pharoah's mute slaves, the rest of us going for higher education were enslaved as well. Who cared what you wanted to do. You got a first class at the Cambridge, ISC, SSC HSC, baccalaureate or whatever school diploma existed at the time and you were a sacrificial lamb. Nobody asked if you wanted to go some obscure route you liked and wanted as a career. You had to do mainline medicine, law or an MBA. Anything else and a guilt trip was thrown at you. There were not too many study programs anyway. And then things changed as they must. You had a choice of a thousand courses leading to hundreds of careers. So what happened to the modern college student? They took years off on sabatticals, they went on time wasting diversions all in the name of looking at what was your thing, on finding what you would be happy with. So the sons and daughters of their regulation bound parents went into some odd lines of study that led to even odder job prospects. When recessions hit, those kind of jobs disappeared or they blossomed up in far away places that few wanted to go to. The full circle or the extreme swing of the pendulum. Not to say today'sainline careers are any more stable. Engineering grads doing whatever they can lay their hands on and except for the odd MBA, all of the others taking jobs in where even an undergraduate degree is wasted. The high schoolers over the years became undergrads and then grads and then PhDs but still no suitable work. A day might come when the Walmarts and the McDonalds of the world may require a Masters degree just to stack shelves and flip burgers. Until then the pendulum will continues to swing. Roland. Toronto. Sent from Samsung Mobile
